Author: Scott N. Romaniuk Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1498599567 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 363
Book Description
Under Siege: Counter-Terrorism and Civil Society in Hungary critically examines the effects of Hungary’s counterterrorism and security policies on civil society organizations since the Fidesz party’s sweeping victory in 2010. It explores the historical and political depths of the government’s security apparatus, including the formation and implementation of its counter-terrorism laws, polices, and institutions, as well as the terrorism landscape. The author draws upon survey research conducted across four categories of civil society organizations, including peacebuilding, development, human rights advocacy, and humanitarianism, and extensive data collected through semi-structured interviews with members of the civil society community, security actors, legal experts, politicians, and scholars. This book argues that the Hungarian government’s counterterrorism and security regime has significantly altered the autonomous space in which civil society organizations operate and severely strained state-society relations.
Author: Lee Jones Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191066257 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 253
Book Description
Today, international economic sanctions are imposed in response to virtually every serious international crisis, whether to promote regime change and democratisation, punish armed aggression, or check nuclear proliferation. But how exactly is the economic pain inflicted by sanctions supposed to translate into political gain? What are the mechanisms by which sanctions operate - or fail to operate? This is the first comparative study of this vital question. Drawing on Gramscian state theory, Societies Under Siege provides a novel analytical framework to study how sanctions are mediated through the domestic political economy and state-society relations of target states and filter through into political outcomes - whether those sought by the states imposing sanctions or, as frequently occurs, unintended and even highly perverse consequences. Detailed case studies of sanctions aimed at regime change in three pivotal cases - South Africa, Iraq and Myanmar - are used to explore how different types of sanctions function across time and space. These case studies draw on extensive fieldwork interviews, archival documents and leaked diplomatic cables to provide a unique insight into how undemocratic regimes targeted by sanctions survive or fall.
Author: Madiha Afzal Publisher: Brookings Institution Press ISBN: 0815729464 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 174
Book Description
Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.
Author: P. M. Joshy Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Limited ISBN: 9789353881825 Category : Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
A comprehensive analysis on the rise, assertion and dominance of the New Hindu Right forces in civil society From its forgettable electoral performance of 1984 to its historical victory in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) story has been fodder for many political and academic debates. In this book, the authors show how the Hindu Right uses security, both external and internal, as a strategy for political mobilisation and eventual electoral success. It further explains the organisational and ideological penetration of the Sangh Parivar into the civil domain through strategies of securitisation. Deriving data from original sources, writings of leaders and their autobiographies, speeches, government documents, reports, pamphlets and manifestos of various Hindutva organisations, the work follows the growth of the Hindu Right forces and its trajectory over the years, taking a close look into its philosophical settings and political strategies. The book assumes significance in light of the massive electoral success of BJP in the 2014 elections.
Author: Larry Diamond Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 142141998X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
With democracy in decline, authoritarian governments are staging a comeback around the world. Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians. As undemocratic regimes become more assertive, they are working together to repress civil society while tightening their grip on cyberspace and expanding their reach in international media. These political changes have fostered the emergence of new counternorms—such as the authoritarian subversion of credible election monitoring—that threaten to further erode the global standing of liberal democracy. In Authoritarianism Goes Global, a distinguished group of contributors present fresh insights on the complicated issues surrounding the authoritarian resurgence and the implications of these systemic shifts for the international order. This collection of essays is critical for advancing our understanding of the emerging challenges to democratic development. Contributors: Anne Applebaum, Anne-Marie Brady, Alexander Cooley, Javier Corrales, Ron Deibert, Larry Diamond, Patrick Merloe, Abbas Milani, Andrew Nathan, Marc F. Plattner, Peter Pomerantsev, Douglas Rutzen, Lilia Shevtsova, Alex Vatanka, Christopher Walker, and Frederic Wehrey
Author: Virginia M. Bouvier Publisher: DIANE Publishing ISBN: 9781422319642 Category : Languages : en Pages : 16
Book Description
This report is based on material gathered during & after a visit to Columbia in Feb. 2003, to evaluate the effects of the internal armed conflict on Colombia civil society. As foreign aid, drug money, & corruption bolster the armed forces, guerrillas, & para-militaries, the armed conflict in Colombia continues to intensify in scope & brutality. Despite the stalling of the national peace process, a vibrant civil society is engaged in a search for peace. Churches, NGOs, & local & regional authorities are designing & implementing programs that offer alternatives to violence. These local & regional peace initiatives are laying the groundwork for confidence-building measures that could lead to broader initiatives for peace at the national level.
Author: James Petras Publisher: Verso ISBN: 9780860919957 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
From Menem’s new Thatcherite experiment in Argentina, through Fujimori’s unexpected victory in Peru, to Collor’s near defeat at the hands of the rapidly growing Workers’ Party of Brazil, Latin American politics is once again in turmoil. Whilst military dictators have been dumped from office, their liberal and populist replacements have found television exposure and playboy reputations insufficient to hold together societies still remorselessly squeezed insufficient to hold together societies still remorselessly squeezed by United States foreign policy. But US influence in the subcontinent is not only under siege from the impoverished masses of increasingly unstable states; it is also threatened by intensifying superpower competition as Japan and a unifying Europe mount their challenges for world dominance. In this wide-ranging and original polemic, Petras and Morley examine the social structures which emerged from neo-liberal economic policy during the 1970s and 1980s. they show how Latin American society is increasingly organized around a continental bourgeoisie maintaining high levels of foreign investment, a national bourgeoisie operating on the margins of legality and committed to both economic deregulation and public-sector activity, and a growing class of low-paid and poorly employed workers subject to the demands of export-oriented capital into international financial circuits is matched by technical and intellectual integration, with a collapse into conformity of formerly critical groupings. For students and the interested general reader, this balanced and rigorous analysis of state power and social form provides a substantial new framework in which to consider the exigent questions of US-Latin American relations.
Author: Timothy Hellwig Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192585134 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 was catalyst for the most precipitous economic downturn in eight decades. This book examines how the GFC and ensuing Great Recession affected electoral politics in the world's developed democracies. The initial wave of research on the crisis concluded it did little to change the established relationships between voters, parties, and elections. Yet nearly a decade since the initial shock, the political landscape has changed in many ways, the extent to which has not been fully explained by existing studies. Democracy Under Siege? pushes against the received wisdom by advancing a framework for understanding citizen attitudes, preferences, and behaviour. It makes two central claims. First, while previous studies of the GFC tend to focus on an immediate impact of the crisis, Hellwig, Kweon, and Vowles argue that economic malaise has a long lasting impact. In addition to economic shock, the economic recovery has a significant impact on citizens' assessment of political elites. Second, the authors argue that unanticipated exogenous shocks like the GFC grants party elites an opening for political manoeuvre through public policy and rhetoric. As a result, political elites have a high degree of agency to shape public perceptions and behaviour. Political parties can strategically moderate citizens' economic uncertainty, mobilise/demobilise voters, and alter individuals' political preferences. By leveraging data from over 150,000 individuals across over 100 nationally-representative post-election surveys from the 1990s to 2017, this book shows how economic change during a tumultuous era affected economic perceptions, policy demands, political participation, and the vote. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district, and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis. The set of volumes in this series is based on these CSES modules, and the volumes address the key theoretical issues and empirical debates in the study of elections and representative democracy. Some of the volumes will be organized around the theoretical issues raised by a particular module, while others will be thematic in their focus. Taken together, these volumes will provide a rigorous and ongoing contribution to understanding the expansion and consolidation of democracy in the twenty-first century. Series editors: Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Ian McAllister.
Author: Rashid Khalidi Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231535953 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
Under Siege is Rashid Khalidi's firsthand account of the 1982 Lebanon War and the complex negotiations for the evacuation of the P.L.O. from Beirut. Utilizing unconventional sources and interviews with key officials and diplomats, Khalidi paints a detailed portrait of the siege and ensuing massacres, providing insight into the military pressure experienced by the P.L.O., the war's impact on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and diplomatic efforts by the United States. A new preface by Khalidi considers developments across the Middle East in the thirty years since the conflict. The preface also cites recently declassified Israeli documents to offer surprising new revelations about the roles and responsibilities of both Israeli leaders and American diplomats in the tragic coda to the war, the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
Author: Scott N. Romaniuk
Author: Lee Jones
Author: Madiha Afzal
Author: P. M. Joshy
Author: Larry Diamond
Author: Virginia M. Bouvier
Author: James Petras
Author: Ron Paul
Author: Timothy Hellwig
Author: Rashid Khalidi